Narrator: Paul Frees

Featuring: Haakon Chevalier, Hans Bethe, Frank Oppenheimer

Edited by David Peoples, Ralph Wikke ; camera, Tom McDonough, David Espar, Stephen Lighthill ; original music, Martin Bresnick ; consultants, Barton Bernstein, Martin Sherwin, Edwin Good

1120 ft

On 16th July 1945, the world's first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site in New Mexico. Three weeks later a similar bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Focusing on the life and personality of J. Robert Oppenheimer, this film traces the development of the atomic bomb, from the time Oppenheimer was appointed to head the Manhattan Project, to the first successful test, to the aftermath of the weapon's use in Japan, and then to his ultimate fall from grace during the McCarthy era as he began to speak out in opposition to further development of nuclear weapons and the even more powerful hydrogen bomb. Using declassified government footage and recollections of Oppenheimer's distinguished friends and associates at Los Alamos, amongst those interviewed are Haakon Chevalier, Nobel Prize-winner Hans Bethe and Frank Oppenheimer

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